Imagine you are an alien tour guide trying to explain human fatherhood to a group of extraterrestrial visitors. What does a father do? Does he mate and run – like most mammalian males? Or does he devote himself to parenting – to full-time, in-your-face fatherhood — like a wolf or eagle does?

To the annoyance of your tour group, you can’t come up with a pithy sound bite. Human fathers are too disparate in their ways. They are all over the map.

Some men are mere sperm donors. Others act like doting wolf dads – feeding, caring for, and sleeping with their young. Most men probably fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

Still, you can make a few generalizations. The history of humans that suggests men adapt their ways to fit the economy – the way they make a living. Switch your tour to time machine mode and you might make these observations:

1. In the beginning, hunter-gatherer mothers did most of the childcare, but fathers helped and were very involved. In some hunter-gatherer groups, men held their babies 10-20% of daylight hours. When kids were a bit older, they traveled by riding “piggyback” on their fathers. And even in groups where fathers didn’t carry their kids, they interacted frequently and showed lots of patience and warmth.

2. When people started making a living by farming and herding, fathers became less involved and more distant. Though they provided crucial economic support to their children, they contributed very little childcare. When they did interact with their kids, it was often in the role of strict disciplinarian.

3. As the world became more industrial and urbanized, fathers began to give their kids more “face time” and social support, though the average father still wasn’t as involved as his hunter-gatherer ancestors had been.

And now? In the 21st century post-industrial world? Fatherhood is just as variable as ever, but as you gaze out from your alien tour bus you might notice two interesting themes:

In many parts of the world, economic turmoil is pulling families apart – forcing men to take jobs far from home. But even in the face of these hardships, ideas about fatherhood are changing. Men are getting more involved, egalitarian, and “hand’s on.”

These two themes appear in an unusual and enlightening new book about fatherhood edited by psychologists David Shwalb, Barbara Schwalb, and Michael Lamb. Fathers in cultural context offers scholarly snapshots of fatherhood in more than a dozen cultures representing at least 50% of the world’s population.

If there ever were a crib sheet about contemporary fatherhood, this book is it. And while it’s clear that modern fatherhood varies a lot – both within and between cultures— the editors make a point that would fit well into any futuristic science fiction story. Despite terrible economic pressures encountered by families in some societies, there seems to be a revolution spreading, “a movement (or at least change in mentality) in favor of fathers’ increased responsibility and involvement in the home.”

We might think of this as a meme born of the women’s movement and the socioeconomic policies of Scandinavia. Sweden, after all, seems to have been the first country to set an explicit agenda for encouraging fathers-as-caregivers.

But as the contributors to this volume argue, the nurturing father is often rooted in local tradition.

Ziarat Hassain notes that the ideal of an affectionate, involved father is promoted in the Qur’an. In historical Japan, fathers were notably affectionate with their children. Jun Nakazawa and David Schwab see a tradition of Japanese fatherhood based on “close attachments rather than on strict discipline or physical punishment.” If globalization and economic forces are spreading change, there are local elements to fan the sparks.

Perhaps, then, we are all children of our distant, foraging ancestors. And if we want a world of involved fathers, we need to address the economic pressures that split families apart.

—————
More reading

For more talk about fatherhood, check out my Parenting Science article, “The evolution of human fatherhood.” There you will find links to the fascinating work of Barry Hewlett, who has written about the historical transitions from foraging to farming and beyond. You’ll also find discussion of Fatherhood: Evolution and Human Paternal Behavior by Peter Gray and Kermyt Anderson, which presents an intriguing synthesis of the social science and biochemistry of dads.

And if you want the inside dope on modern fatherhood around the world — from Brazil to China, Australia to Bangladesh, South Africa to the U.K– you’ll find it in

image of father and baby daughter by Cleopas kavita / wikimedia commonsimage of aboriginal Australian father and child by Fredrik Lidarp / wikimedia commonsimage of Scandinavian father and infant by Patrik Hägglund / wikimedia commons

Recent posts

I hope they’re getting more involved. It’s interesting to see that fathers started out, in the hunter-gatherer age, being far more involved. It suggests that is the more natural setting. I wonder if the stresses and settings involved in working away from the family makes fathers less attached when they’re with their family?

Megan B.

I won’t come to any conclusions about the question, though as a single mother to a 23 month old smart intelligent boy, I’ll admit that my son does not know what his dad looks like nor has he heard his voice. I do not collect money from his dad, and I am not on any kind of welfare. It may not be flowers and chocolates and breakfast in bed but we get along just fine and have a support system in place.
The main reason I wanted to post was because that is such a lovely picture of the two nose to nose, and the others are lovely as well, so nice to see a guy caring for their baby as I have not seen that in real life.

Megan B.

Well, that’s not true, I suppose I have seen some guys caring for their babies.

Ryaa

I would say yes, definitely. My husband knows our two baby girls as well as I do. He took 9 months parental leave for both and missed them horribly when he returned to work. My brother is also more involved in raising his children then my father was. Our male friends are all involved in caring for their children. I would guess it has a lot to do with how they were raised and how easily and how often they see their children.

Hot Topic

Note: This is a fun post spoofing a popular series on one of my favorite technology blogs. The boy scouts have a motto “always be prepared.” My son doesn’t know that because he is 3. But he does like to be prepared in case an adventure (or a 30-minute ride to his grandparents house) presents… Read more »